Wednesday, May 2, 2018

"Icebergs could float to the rescue of Cape Town water crisis"

From Reuters Africa:

Marine salvage experts are floating a plan to tug icebergs from
Antarctica to South Africa’s drought-hit Cape Town to help solve the
region’s worst water shortage in a century.

Salvage master Nick
Sloane told Reuters he was looking for government and private investors
for a scheme to guide huge chunks of ice across the ocean, chop them
into a slury and melt them down into millions of litres of drinking
water.

“We want to show that if there is no other source to solve
the water crisis, we have another idea no one else has thought of yet,”
said Sloane, who led the refloating of the capsized Italian passenger
liner Costa Concordia in 2014.

South Africa has declared a
national disaster over the drought that hit its southern and western
regions after 2015 and 2016 turned into two of the driest years on
record.

Tough water restrictions are already in place and Cape
Town authorities have warned that taps could run dry altogether as soon
as next year if winter rains do not come to the rescue of the port
city’s 4 million residents....MORE